Richard & Alice

The story is very enrapturing and the visuals have that retro charm. The sound/music was pretty well executed. My only problem with Richard and Alice is that it's very short! Expect to finish the game within 3 hours, basically exploring everything except a few dialogue paths. As interactive stories go, this is a goodie. As games go, it's quick and leaves you wanting more.

Despite an interesting premise and moments of earnest dialog, the story ultimately fell flat. Only one character was strongly developed (though the writing for the character is to be commended), and my curiosity about the world diminished as I played on. The game's world seemed empty in terms of themes or substance. The scenes between Richard and Alice together mostly seemed like a waste. The twists at the end were poorly conveyed and felt rushed, leaving me with little impact and little drive to see an alternate ending.

This game has what most games lack, characters interesting enough that we feel compelled to care about, in fact, not only them, but the setting as well, it isn't quite well detailed and you won't be doing much of exploring, but you won't lose any of its depth. It's hard to find games that get that right, so it should really be something to be reminded about Richard & Alice. Another important pro is the fact that it really sucks you in. If you want to get a nice distraction or just be away for a few hours, this is a solid purchase. On the other hand, this game suffers from a few programming issues, especially when you're walking and you try to click on the transparency between the side of the screen and the items menu, that could be easily solved with a few tweaks on the game engine. Also, the game feels too linear sometimes, especially towards the endings, you don't really feel you're actually changing them. They felt random because there weren't many decisive choices, stuff that could change the characters views on the story and mold them into the different endings. Graphics and soundtrack were decent though, for an indie game. So I'm rating it as a 4/5 because it does a great job in what it was supposed to, the game could be better and I feel like a 3.5 would be more fair, but giving it a 3 doesn't seem to make it any justice. Richard & Alice is a good game and something that game devs should definitely look into. Give it a try, play it!

Richard & Alice has a great mature plot but the short game length, basic puzzles and primitive graphics holds the game back. Definitely worth a look if you can get it cheap though and another good example of the AGS engine's capabilities.